'Black Hawk Down' Anniversary: Al Qaeda's Hidden Hand

A group of young Somalis chant anti American slogans while sitting atop the burned out hulk of a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter in Mogadishu, Somalia on Oct. 19, 1993. The helicopter was one of two shot down during a firefight with Somali guerrillas in which 18 U.S. servicemen were killed along with one Malaysian peacekeeper and 300 Somalis.

Dominique Mollard/AP Photo

As U.S. veterans of the October 1993 "Black Hawk Down" battle in Somalia honor their fallen this week, others also remember it as the 20th anniversary of America's first blow from al Qaeda -- even though the U.S. didn't know it at the time.

The street battles that ensued on Oct. 3 and 4, 1993, involved U.S. Army Rangers and commandos from the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, known as "Delta Force." During a successful mission to capture lieutenants of Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed, hundreds of Somali gunmen engaged the U.S. teams and killed 18 soldiers, wounded 73 others and shot down two Army Black Hawk choppers.

America's subsequent hasty exit from that mission, which was originally to support United Nations humanitarian operations in Mogadishu, emboldened a little-known terrorist leader at the time named Osama bin Laden, who boasted that the U.S. superpower was weak for withdrawing after losing G.I.s in "minor battles" there.

What bin Laden didn't say in 1996 was that his henchmen had a hand in training and equipping the Somali militiamen who inflicted the worst day of casualties in the history of U.S. Special Operations Forces. Deadly al Qaeda attacks in the Horn of Africa against U.S. targets in 1996, 1998 and 2000 followed, leading up to 9/11.

"It is true that al Qaeda was emboldened by 1993 – it was their first successful attack on us and we were unaware of bin Laden's involvement until later," former Sen. Bob Kerrey, who served on the 9/11 Commission, told ABC News on Thursday.

Al Qaeda military chief Mohammed Atef, an Egyptian known as "Abu Hafs," was sent by bin Laden to Mogadishu, where he offered to help Aideed fight U.S. and U.N. forces, according to FBI files. In 1998, after two U.S. embassies were struck by suicide bombers in Kenya and Tanzania, the FBI interviewed Al Qaeda operative Mohammad Sadiq Odeh in Nairobi, who admitted he was among the men al Qaeda shura council member Saif el Adel -- also a former Egyptian military officer -- had ordered to Somalia before the attack on the Rangers and Delta operators.

"Odeh stated that his mission in Somalia was to train some of the tribes fighting and to provide food and money," FBI Agent Dan Coleman wrote in a report then.

Coleman also interviewed an active-duty U.S. soldier, Army Sgt. Ali Mohamed, a Special Forces Middle East expert at Fort Bragg who later pled guilty to scouting the U.S. embassies for bin Laden before they were bombed, in addition to training al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan.

"Mohamed also advised that he was in Somalia during the United States intervention overseas and knew that bin Laden's people were responsible for the killing of United States soldiers in Somalia," Coleman reported back to the FBI in 1998.

"A small group of Afghanistan [mujahideen] veterans undertook a number of skillful operations against the Americans in Somalia," an al Qaeda internal history published a decade ago stated. "When the valiant soldiers of Islam came to them with the rod of Moses and the mujahideen poured their fire on them, the Americans withdrew from Somalia in an unexpected haste."